Kediri > Daha Jawa Timur Indonesia

A number of smaller Javanese realms follow the Medang Kingdom, the best-known of which are Kediri (mid-eleventh to early thirteenth centuries) and ...

Continued population growth, political and military rivalries, and economic expansion in this region produce important changes in Javanese society.

Taken together, these changes lay the groundwork for what has often been identified as Java's—and Indonesia's—"golden age" in the fourteenth century.

In Kediri, for example, there develops a multilayered bureaucracy and a professional army.

The ruler extends control over transportation and irrigation and cultivates the arts in order to enhance his own reputation and that of the court as a brilliant and unifying cultural hub.

The Old Javanese literary tradition of the kakawin (long narrative poem) rapidly develops, moving away from the Sanskrit models of the previous era and producing many key works in the classical canon.

Kediri's military and economic influence spreads to parts of Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

A third external force comes into play with the arrival of the Portuguese in the archipelago.

They reach the rich and expanding Melaka, on the Malay Peninsula, in 1509 and seek trading rights there.

Some in Melaka's cosmopolitan trading community want to accept them (perhaps as a counterweight against Sultan Mahmud's controversial imperial policies), but others do not, heightening existing political tensions.

When the Portuguese return 1511 commanded by the more demanding Alfonso de Albuquerque, they defeat Melaka militarily, soon establishing themselves in the trading ports of Banten (western Java) and Ternate (Maluku), and contacting the much reduced Majapahit kingdom at Kediri in eastern Java.

These events do not, as is sometimes suggested, mark the beginning of Western colonial rule, or even European primacy, in Indonesia; that lies far in the future.

Rather, the "Western intrusion" is at this stage merely one dynamic bound up, in often unpredictable ways, with many others.

Thus, the final days of Majapahit, weakened by internal division, are determined by Trenggana, the half-Chinese Muslim ruler of its former vassal port Demak, who in 1527 conquers Kediri for reasons that had as much to do with economic and political rivalry (with Banten, the Portuguese, and Majapahit's remnants) as they do with religious struggle (with both Christianity and Hindu-Buddhist ideology).

Girisawardhana, son of Kertawijaya, who had assumed power in 1456, had died ten years later and been succeeded by Singhawikramawardhana.

In 1468, Prince Kertabhumi had rebelled against Singhawikramawardhana, styling himself king of Majapahit.

Singhawikramawardhana had responded by moving the kingdom’s capital further inland to Daha (the former capital of Kediri kingdom), effectively splitting Majapahit, under Singhawikramawardhana in Daha and …